Nisi Shawl (born 1955) is an African-American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of
science fiction and
fantasy short stories
who writes and teaches about how
fantastic fiction
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fan ...
might reflect real-world
diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, colonialism, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors.
''Writing the Other'', short stories, and awards/memberships
Shawl is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of ''Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction'', a creative-writing handbook derived from the authors' workshop of the same name, in which participants explore techniques to help them write credible characters outside their own cultural experience. Reviewer Genevieve Williams of speculative fiction magazine ''
Strange Horizons'' summed up about this guidebook: "The practices advocated and concepts presented in ''Writing the Other'' may seem PC to some, but following them will help to ensure that an author gives more than lip service to diversity and is thoughtful about the creation and development of societies, cultures, and characters (which we all should be anyway). Much of what Shawl and Ward advocate is, quite simply, good practice: the avoidance of cliches, flat characters, unintended effects, and other hallmarks of lazy writing."
Shawl's short stories have appeared in ''
Asimov's Science Fiction'', the ''Infinite Matrix'', ''
Strange Horizons'', ''
Semiotext(e)'' and numerous other magazines and anthologies.
Brian Charles Clark of the fiction review site, ''Curled Up'' ''With a Good Book,'' praised their debut collection, ''Filter House'' (2008) – which gathered 11 previously published and three original short fiction pieces – saying that: "Shawl’s keen sense of justice and their adamant anti-colonialism always ride just beneath the surface of their stories. Never didactic, Shawl possesses the gift of a true storyteller: the ability to let the warp and weft of plot and character do their moral work for them."
Shawl is a member of the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a 1992 graduate of the
Clarion West Writers Workshop. They are a board member of Clarion West and one of the founders of the
Carl Brandon Society
The Carl Brandon Society is a group originating within the science fiction fandom, science fiction community "dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy and Horror fictio ...
. Their stories have been shortlisted for the
Theodore Sturgeon Award, the
Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the
Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award, and ''Writing the Other'' received special mention for the
James Tiptree Jr. Award. In 2008, they won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for ''Filter House'', which was also shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. In 2009 their
novella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
''Good Boy'' was additionally nominated for a
World Fantasy Award. Their 2016 novel ''Everfair'' was nominated for a
Nebula Award
The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of profe ...
.
''Everfair''
Shawl's first novel,
Neo-Victorian
Neo-Victorianism is an aesthetic movement that features an overt nostalgia for the Victorian period, generally in the context of the broader hipster subculture of the 1990s-2010s. It is also likened to other "neos" (e.g. neoconservatism, neoli ...
,
Belgian-Congo-set,
steampunk
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or ...
story ''Everfair'', was released in September 2016 by
Tor Books, with a cover illustration by award-winning, Hong Kong artist
Victo Ngai
Victo Ngai (born 1988) is an American illustrator raised in Hong Kong. Her work has been described as being highly detailed and precise, referencing comic book drawings, classic children's book illustrations, the work of Japanese painters, and mo ...
.
''Everfair'' is an
alternate history
Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, altern ...
of the African Congo, Europe, and the United States, during the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, where Shawl's science-fictional turning point is that "the native populations (of the Congo) had learned about steam technology a bit earlier."
Their novel imagines that British
Fabian Socialists team up with African-American Christian missionaries to purchase land in the
Congo Basin
The Congo Basin (french: Bassin du Congo) is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It con ...
from
Leopold II of Belgium, thus creating a speculative new nation in their version of history, where citizens could experiment with the freedoms they had lacked in their original homelands, as well as benefit from this key technology of the industrial revolution, that of
steam engines
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...
.
Contributions to women's, multicultural, and global speculative fiction
In 2009, Shawl donated their archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at
Northern Illinois University.
In 2011, their longtime work in the women's speculative fiction was recognized, when Shawl was selected as
Guest of Honor at
WisCon 35. In 2015, recognized as one of the "go to" teachers and mentors within the speculative fiction community on pedagogical issues of diversity, they served as guest speaker both in the "Black to the Future: An Imagination Incubator" ("Ferguson is the Future") symposium of multicultural speculative fiction artists, academics, and creative writers, at Princeton University (held on September 14, 2015) and in the "Creating Futures Rooted in Wonder" symposium of fairy tale, science fiction, and indigenous storytellers and scholars, at the University of Hawai'i (held from September 16–19, 2015), where they performed in author readings with Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, and other indigenous writers, as well as led creative writing workshops.
Shawl's novel ''Everfair'' joins with the growing movement of international
speculative-fiction writers of color, including editorial efforts by Jaymee Goh of Malaysia and Joyce Chng of Singapore (author-anthologists behind the 2015 collection of Southeast Asian steampunk published in English, ''The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia''), to repurpose the
science fiction trope
Trope or tropes may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept
* Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device
* Trope (music), any of a variety of different things ...
of
alternate history
Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, altern ...
in critical ways that foreground issues of colonialism, globalization, and culture.
Afrofuturist and feminist sf anthologies
Shawl has edited several anthologies of
speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
, especially collections of
Afrofuturist, feminist/
LGBT, and
African-American sf/fantasy short stories, including recent homages to pioneering black/queer sf novelists
Samuel R. Delany and
Octavia E. Butler: ''Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany'' (2015), co-edited with Bill Campbell, and ''Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler'' (2015), co-edited by Rebecca J. Holden. Shawl's anthology work has been part of their longtime participation within both the feminist and the African-American sf writing communities, evidenced in their editing of ''WisCon Chronicles Vol. 5: Writing and Racial Identity'' (2011, generated from America's most venerable
feminist sf convention); as well as in their stories' publication within women sf writers' literary experiments, such as ''Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies'' (2006, by feminist sf publisher
Aqueduct Press) and within African-American speculative fiction collections, notably the groundbreaking ''
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora'' (2000).
Personal life and influences
Shawl was born in
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropolit ...
. They started attending the Residential College of the
University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in 1971 at the age of 16, but did not graduate. They live in
Seattle,
Washington, where they review books for the ''
Seattle Times
''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...
'' as a freelance contributor.
Shawl is bisexual and uses they/them pronouns.
They stated in 2018 that they increasingly identify as genderfluid.
Among those who have influenced their work, they have named writers
Colette,
Monique Wittig, and
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...
; as well as speculative fiction authors
Gwyneth Jones,
Suzy McKee Charnas,
Joanna Russ,
Samuel R. Delany,
Howard Waldrop, and
Eileen Gunn.
Select bibliography
Fiction
*"I Was a Teenage Genetic Engineer," ''Semiotext(e) SF'', New York, NY: Columbia University, April 1989,
*"The Rainses'," ''Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', April 1995 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"The Pragmatical Princess," ''Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', January 1999 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"At the Huts of Ajala," ''Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora'', New York, : Warner Books, July 2000 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Shiomah's Land," ''Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', March 2001 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Vapors," ''Wet: More Aqua Erotica'',
Mary Anne Mohanraj
Mary Anne Amirthi Mohanraj (born July 26, 1971) is an American writer, editor, and academic of Sri Lankan birth.
Background
Mohanraj was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka but moved to the United States at the age of two and grew up in New Britain, ...
(editor), Three Rivers Press, NY, NY.
*"The Beads of Ku," ''Rosebud Magazine'', Issue 23, April 2002 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Momi Watsu," Strange Horizons (website) August 2003 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Deep End," ''
So Long Been Dreaming
''So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy'' (2004) is an anthology of short stories by African, Asian, South Asian, and Indigenous authors, as well as North American and British writers of colour,''So Long Been Dreaming'' cov ...
: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy'', edited by
Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, 2004,
Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, BC, Canada. (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Maggies," ''Dark Matter: Reading the Bones'', edited by Sheree R. Thomas, 2004, NY: Warner Books. (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Matched," ''The Infinite Matrix'' (excerpt from the novel ''The Blazing World'', co-sponsored by the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs), May 2005.
*"Wallamelon," ''Aeon Speculative Fiction'' #3, May 2005 (website) (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Cruel Sistah," ''Asimov's SF Magazine'', October/November 2005; Year's Best Fantasy & Horror #19, New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, August 2006.
*"But She's Only a Dream," Trabuco Road (website) March 2007 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*"Little Horses" ''Detroit Noir'', Akashic Books, November 2007 (appeared in FILTER HOUSE)
*''Everfair'', Tor, 2016
Non-fiction
*''Writing the Other: A Practical Guide'', with co-author Cynthia Ward,
Aqueduct Press, Seattle, WA, December 2005.
*"To Jack Kerouac, to Make Much of Space and Time," ''Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies'',
L. Timmel Duchamp
L. Timmel Duchamp is an American author of science fiction. She is also an editor for Aqueduct Press.
Biography
Duchamp is often grouped together with Kelly Link and other contemporary women authors who use genres like fantasy, horror, and scie ...
(editor), Aqueduct Press, Seattle, WA, March 2006.
References
External links
*
*
"A Review of ''Writing the Other''"at Compulsive Reader
"A review of ''Writing the Other''"at
Strange Horizons"Transracial Writing for the Sincere,"article by Nisi Shawl, at ''Speculations''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shawl, Nisi
Living people
21st-century American novelists
American science fiction writers
American short story writers
African-American novelists
American fantasy writers
Writers from Kalamazoo, Michigan
Writers from Seattle
University of Michigan alumni
1955 births
Black speculative fiction authors
Bisexual writers
Afrofuturist writers
Novelists from Michigan
Novelists from Washington (state)
LGBT African Americans
LGBT people from Michigan
LGBT people from Washington (state)
Non-binary writers
21st-century African-American writers
20th-century African-American people